In all likelihood, Microsoft is betting that MetroUI Phones and the Surface Tablet will break users into Windows 8. However, the release of Windows 8 into the desktop market is probably ill-timed. If W8 was made available months after Surface was, then it'd be a much better scenario for Windows. But with the imminent fail of W8 a majority of users will downgrade, a significant minority will jump to Linux because they'll be able to recycle their existing workstation rather than buy all new hardware to run OS X and the others will stick with W8.

At least, this is my prediction.

That has pretty much been my prediction as well. If the Linux thing does happen, I'm hoping that the community will get serious and do some great stuff.

But of course, we'll actually have to wait and see in October!

Ashbad wrote:

I say that switching to any new OS is going to cost just as much money as the next OS; I'd even suspect making a change to *nix from windows will cost magnitudes more than an inter-Windows version upgrade...

No no no, I meant in terms of switching Windows 7 to Windows 8 only. Switching to Linux might be a disaster!

flyingfisch wrote:

I think that as the Open-source userbase increases, OpenOffice and LibreOffice will probably update their UI.

That's my hope as well, though I feel that no one over there is thinking about it because apparently they have to design some kind of framework for it to work...

flyingfisch wrote:

Ubuntu seems to have done a great job on user-friendliness. I know, everyone hates unity (I don't), but I have to say, for your typical Grandma/Mom, this is the most user-friendly UI I have seen.

I am saying this from experience. My Mom, my Aunt, and my Grandma all have Ubuntu now (I installed it), and they love it. All three of them hated computers before, got frustrated with windows, and called me to speed up their computers. Ubuntu got them more. It got them to be able to use their computer without frustration as well. I have not heard complaints from any of them on the Unity UI. On the contrary, they all rave about how easy it is to use, as well as how "pretty" it is (I think we all have a secret love of Mac's UI).

For the dead simple, sure. But what if I want to make some changes here and there to the Unity UI? There's no button, dragging, or really any meaningful settings to do so. Furthermore, if I were to use the older UI (GNOME fallback) due to my not-so-great hardware, what would happen then? The interface can be muddled with Unity references. Personally, I use XFCE and avoid all of the Unity stuff, and I see lots of holes. Some stuff won't even load!

When things go right, it's great - but when things fall apart, eh....

flyingfisch wrote:

Try getting someone who has always used MS Office 2003. They don't notice the difference.

seana11 wrote:

5. I like the lack of ribbons. (On a different note) Writer is superior to Word. However, the whole suite needs to be upgraded especially in the calc, base, and clip art sections, all of which pale in comparison to MS Office.

I was referring to Microsoft Office (MSO) 2003, not the horrifying pretty stuff that MS dubs "ribbons". People look around to find their favorite menu-y option from Word in LibreOffice (LO), and either don't find it, or find it and can't figure it out. This comes from work experience... as in hearing my mentors/coworkers complain about it. If LO were to adopt a complete (optional) transformation to MSO 2003, I'm sure that it will get popular overnight.

There are also plenty of features that LO is missing compared to MSO.

seana11 wrote:

1. Debian. Rock solid distro.

Agreed - and I use this for all my servers. Pity that I'm too lazy to get this installed for my laptop/desktop!

seana11 wrote:

2. Lets look at some of the major forks of the past 5 years. LibreOffice was forked off of OpenOffice, Xonotic was forked off of Nexuiz, and Magia was foked off of Mandriva. Nothing else. Five years, and only 3 forks that anyone cares about. Why is this? Because it's taboo to fork something. There may be hate in a project, but people don't fork without a very good reason.

There are also some forks that are based on little tiny things here and there, which is wasted effort considering most of them are inactive and gone.

seana11 wrote:

3. That argument would have worked in 1999. Not anymore. There is a melange of user-friendly distros that have matured. Software installation has gotten much better, and more things "just work." You don't have to dig in etc if you want to change stuff any more. Linux is very friendly towards users.

It's getting there, but not quite. As I've mentioned before, there are holes in some interfaces (especially with regards to settings), and the ability to change certain settings (like wireless) are limited compared to Windows.

seana11 wrote:

4. I would attribute this not to a lack of teamwork, but to the lack of an official distro--not to say that that's better. The way it is set up currently, there is the perfect distro for every user. Some are more hacky than others; some are more bleeding-edge than others. It's much better than only having one option, like Windows or OS X.

One option can be better if it offers the same flexibility as having multiple distros... of course, that's a pipe dream, but still...

I'd say that most users are the "conservative" type - as long as they can do what they want, they'll use it. Stability, IMO, is the most important, and very few distros these days can offer that kind of no-frill stability. (Or at least, very few frills)

willrandship wrote:

Forking generally isn't because of internal strife, but out of necessity. The ones where some guy doesn't get along with some other guy are such insignificant projects relative to an Operating System that they go relatively unnoticed.

I'm an Arch man myself. Gotta love the updates, and as of yet it has actually been my most stable system, simply because of the lack of strange OS-specific configurations. (Ubuntu >Sad )

I wouldn't recommend it to the faint of heart, though. Installing it is...an adventure, on good days.

Forking is, from my POV, on occasion out of necessity. Mostly, it's politics (see above) and silly tiny things. Wasted effort, wasted time that could've been given to the main project. Sure, I do commend (and support) forks like LibreOffice, where making meaningful changes that developers wanted was actually hard and painful. But most of the forks out there are just experiments and/or political based.

I highly recommend Debian - installation is a breeze, and everything is straightforward. The only thing that's iffy is the GUI installer (which is quite horrifying when it comes to the partitioning), but otherwise it's very nice to install and use.

DShiznit wrote:

I don't see why people will feel the need to change OS's at all if Win8 is the failure its expected to be. Why not just continue to use the OS they're already using, which works fine? A lot of my school's computers still use Windows XP. They've had no need to upgrade since XP does everything they need it to. Only the teacher machines and some of the High School's classroom stations use Windows 7, and only because they're relatively new purchases. I suspect those using Windows 7 will simply stick with it until MS either fixes win 8 or releases a better OS(similar to how a number of XP users stuck with that until win7 came out).

Exactly... no one will be buying into Windows 8. It's just that people like bashing it with everything they've got, that's all.

DShiznit wrote:

This discussion does have me considering installing a linux distro on my secondary partition instead of winXP. Are there any you guys would recommend for running older windows programs(like the numerous '00 Star Trek games and quake III clones I have trouble running right now)?

Linux can run (with some limitations) quite a few old Windows programs with WINE. It's just those newer ones (like MSO2010) that WINE will falter at. Check out the WineHQ AppDB to see if your games are supported.

My recommendation is Linux Mint or Debian. The former uses Ubuntu as its base, but carries some nice tweaks that have made the community very happy (like a Win7 menu or a GNOME2 fallback). It's very user friendly, especially for installation. You will be using bleeding-edge software here. However, the stability isn't as guaranteed.

The latter is very stable, but you will encounter some not-so-friendly install parts (maybe one or two). Afterwards, you'll encounter the good ol' GNOME interface (or is that XFCE?). Note that this is "old" compared to the other distros in terms of included software (emphasis on stability), so you may need to find a repo that has Wine precompiled or compile it yourself.

/longpost

In case you were wondering, I'm a long time Linux user (and possibly fanatic). I run Linux Mint on a daily basis, and on occasion program stuff for Linux. I love FOSS, and I love LibreOffice. But I don't think that Linux, FOSS, or LibreOffice** is perfect, and I hope that with the upcoming Windows 8 "fall" (if it comes true) will change the attitude (and code) of the community for the better.

** Of course this isn't to say Windows is perfect - I'm pretty sure the average layman can name it's imperfections too!

I'm already running Windows 7 as my primary OS, and I like some of the features(like being able to make photo thumbnails ludicrously big). The only thing I'm debating now is what OS to put on the second partition of this Harddrive. XP would run the games I want no problem and I could use the same NTFS filesystem(I've heard there are issues using linux on NTFS). I would really only install linux just to be different, and to get more used to the OS should I need to use it in the future.

Well, running NTFS for the base system is bad, since most linuxes rely on the filesystem to defragment itself. (Ext* does this, as do many others) There are also other reasons. You could make it ext3 and use one of the windows viewers for it.

Another thing that could help linux adoption amongst at least gamers is that it is in general a more efficient operating system and steam is being ported to it so games may end up running better.

For the office debate yes teaching people will have to relearn how to use the office software. I am of the opinion that open source software should not have to work to look/feel like close source versions unless its the most efficient/best way. I think there should be introductory like versions like distros like ubuntu and linux mint work as. The work to have there be an easy transition(You could also do this with a MSOffice compatibly mode which corporations could have on as default) I personally use Calligra except where it is missing a few features where I'll switch over to LibreOffice. Its very rare that I have to switch to windows to use Excel or and other MSOffice app.

I honestly think that if gaming and manufactures moved over to linux it could become the dominant OS, but since most people are technologically challenged they will not switch on their own. If manufactures start having mint or ubuntu as a default OS then people will adapt. The only reason I choose those two distros is that in my experience they are the best for transition. If people like bleeding edge and more customizability they can switch to something like arch or gentoo/sabayon.

They did already have most of the codebase set up they only had to change graphics then optimize. And the difference was only about 3 ms per frame if I remember correctly but that was a change from about 300 to 340 or something like that. My only worry is how many games are made using C# and proprietary Microsoft libraries. A good example is Terraria which works occasionally on linux with lots of steps to possibly get it working.

Fun Fact: Developer of SDL moved to working at Valve(though he still says he'll work on SDL 2.0). He may be able to help them get a pretty good way of porting games between platforms

Ubuntu seems to have done a great job on user-friendliness. I know, everyone hates unity (I don't), but I have to say, for your typical Grandma/Mom, this is the most user-friendly UI I have seen.

I am saying this from experience. My Mom, my Aunt, and my Grandma all have Ubuntu now (I installed it), and they love it. All three of them hated computers before, got frustrated with windows, and called me to speed up their computers. Ubuntu got them more. It got them to be able to use their computer without frustration as well. I have not heard complaints from any of them on the Unity UI. On the contrary, they all rave about how easy it is to use, as well as how "pretty" it is (I think we all have a secret love of Mac's UI).

For the dead simple, sure. But what if I want to make some changes here and there to the Unity UI? There's no button, dragging, or really any meaningful settings to do so. Furthermore, if I were to use the older UI (GNOME fallback) due to my not-so-great hardware, what would happen then? The interface can be muddled with Unity references. Personally, I use XFCE and avoid all of the Unity stuff, and I see lots of holes. Some stuff won't even load!

When things go right, it's great - but when things fall apart, eh....

But you have to remember that Unity is only a little over a year old. Later versions are supposed to be much easier to customize, as everything will be unity, instead of having compiz do the animations, etc. Metacity decorating windows, and Unity pretty much just consisting of the top panel and the side bar.

I would guess that by the end of next year, everything should be seamlessly integrated.

Ubuntu seems to have done a great job on user-friendliness. I know, everyone hates unity (I don't), but I have to say, for your typical Grandma/Mom, this is the most user-friendly UI I have seen.

I am saying this from experience. My Mom, my Aunt, and my Grandma all have Ubuntu now (I installed it), and they love it. All three of them hated computers before, got frustrated with windows, and called me to speed up their computers. Ubuntu got them more. It got them to be able to use their computer without frustration as well. I have not heard complaints from any of them on the Unity UI. On the contrary, they all rave about how easy it is to use, as well as how "pretty" it is (I think we all have a secret love of Mac's UI).

For the dead simple, sure. But what if I want to make some changes here and there to the Unity UI? There's no button, dragging, or really any meaningful settings to do so. Furthermore, if I were to use the older UI (GNOME fallback) due to my not-so-great hardware, what would happen then? The interface can be muddled with Unity references. Personally, I use XFCE and avoid all of the Unity stuff, and I see lots of holes. Some stuff won't even load!

When things go right, it's great - but when things fall apart, eh....

But you have to remember that Unity is only a little over a year old. Later versions are supposed to be much easier to customize, as everything will be unity, instead of having compiz do the animations, etc. Metacity decorating windows, and Unity pretty much just consisting of the top panel and the side bar.

I would guess that by the end of next year, everything should be seamlessly integrated.

Eh, I don't really like the GNOME philosophy, which is somewhat like the windows philosophy. "Our setup is absolutely perfect, so we're not going to provide any options to modify it in the slightest way." This is in contrast to the rest of the *.nix world where you can modify *everything*.

Ubuntu seems to have done a great job on user-friendliness. I know, everyone hates unity (I don't), but I have to say, for your typical Grandma/Mom, this is the most user-friendly UI I have seen.

I am saying this from experience. My Mom, my Aunt, and my Grandma all have Ubuntu now (I installed it), and they love it. All three of them hated computers before, got frustrated with windows, and called me to speed up their computers. Ubuntu got them more. It got them to be able to use their computer without frustration as well. I have not heard complaints from any of them on the Unity UI. On the contrary, they all rave about how easy it is to use, as well as how "pretty" it is (I think we all have a secret love of Mac's UI).

For the dead simple, sure. But what if I want to make some changes here and there to the Unity UI? There's no button, dragging, or really any meaningful settings to do so. Furthermore, if I were to use the older UI (GNOME fallback) due to my not-so-great hardware, what would happen then? The interface can be muddled with Unity references. Personally, I use XFCE and avoid all of the Unity stuff, and I see lots of holes. Some stuff won't even load!

When things go right, it's great - but when things fall apart, eh....

But you have to remember that Unity is only a little over a year old. Later versions are supposed to be much easier to customize, as everything will be unity, instead of having compiz do the animations, etc. Metacity decorating windows, and Unity pretty much just consisting of the top panel and the side bar.

I would guess that by the end of next year, everything should be seamlessly integrated.

Eh, I don't really like the GNOME philosophy, which is somewhat like the windows philosophy. "Our setup is absolutely perfect, so we're not going to provide any options to modify it in the slightest way." This is in contrast to the rest of the *.nix world where you can modify *everything*.

Well, first of all, Unity is a fork of GNOME. However, I have see that philosophy in Unity's dev circles also, particularly in Mark Shuttleberg's absolute refusal to let the user change the position of the launcher.

However, I do like the Unity interface, and I do not think i will be changing from it soon...

XFCE all the way. It has a complete enough suite to not require tons of maintenance where you don't care (unlike, say, LXDE) but has options for places where you do.

All I've wanted so far was a way to render the CPU Frequency monitors over the top of each other (vertical with horizontal rendering) but I found another way anyhow. PS Deskbar does Horizontal Layout, but not rendering. (at least for CPUFreq)

For the office debate yes teaching people will have to relearn how to use the office software. I am of the opinion that open source software should not have to work to look/feel like close source versions unless its the most efficient/best way. I think there should be introductory like versions like distros like ubuntu and linux mint work as. The work to have there be an easy transition(You could also do this with a MSOffice compatibly mode which corporations could have on as default) I personally use Calligra except where it is missing a few features where I'll switch over to LibreOffice. Its very rare that I have to switch to windows to use Excel or and other MSOffice app.

Relearn? No one has the patience to do that. And in the enterprise world, relearning costs money, time, and productivity. It will likely take a few days if the employee is smart, up to a few months if not.

I won't say that LibreOffice should be exactly like MSO 2003 (if that were the case, Microsoft would sue the pants off LibreOffice - literally), but it has to have some resemblance, especially in terms of interface and features. There are some things in LibreOffice/OpenOffice that you have to admit, are pretty dumb (my word processor needs my address, fax number, and phone number? really?), but they are working on addressing those interface issues, as well as making it shiny and pretty for users. (For the one I mentioned, the wiki, a nice insight to their development, has a page for fixing this.)

I honestly think that if gaming and manufactures moved over to linux it could become the dominant OS, but since most people are technologically challenged they will not switch on their own. If manufactures start having mint or ubuntu as a default OS then people will adapt. The only reason I choose those two distros is that in my experience they are the best for transition. If people like bleeding edge and more customizability they can switch to something like arch or gentoo/sabayon.

Big if. Ubuntu really needs to switch to a stable environment, or otherwise things will just hurt for them. Say the mfr. and Canonical team up, and supposedly makes hardware and software integration perfect. What about application libraries and applications themselves? If they are unstable, the experience is ruined. And there is no pill for fixing software bugs. By the time the updates are available, users will have been scared to the far reaches of Windows...

Mint is no better. Even though they try their best to make the desktop experience nice, the core code is still based on Ubuntu's distro, and that causes problems. If they were to base their main distro on Debian, it might work.

flyingfisch wrote:

But you have to remember that Unity is only a little over a year old. Later versions are supposed to be much easier to customize, as everything will be unity, instead of having compiz do the animations, etc. Metacity decorating windows, and Unity pretty much just consisting of the top panel and the side bar.

Yeah, and they should have delivered a complete product instead of shoving it down users' throats when they think it looks pretty enough. That alienated many users, and so Linux Mint has gotten more popular.

The other thing: while Mac OS X may be friendly with kids and elderly, what about those gamers (from Windows) who are supposedly coming to Linux? They'll balk at the Mac OS X style dock and window bars, and maybe even go nuts. Plus, customization is something those guys desire a LOT, and where does Unity offer that? Canonical doesn't want you to customize, because they are being idiots and doing the "interface experiment"... they're no better than Microsoft making Metro the main interface in Windows 8. (Probably even worse because people had issues with their desktops, even the fallback GNOME one.)

seana11 wrote:

Eh, I don't really like the GNOME philosophy, which is somewhat like the windows philosophy. "Our setup is absolutely perfect, so we're not going to provide any options to modify it in the slightest way." This is in contrast to the rest of the *.nix world where you can modify *everything*.

You mean the Mac OS X philosophy. On Windows, you can change some things, like colors and themes. Which is a lot more than Mac OS X's customization allowance (none). Windows can also get patches and such for significant changes to the interface. No such patches exist for Mac OS X.

willrandship wrote:

XFCE all the way. It has a complete enough suite to not require tons of maintenance where you don't care (unlike, say, LXDE) but has options for places where you do.

I'm actually worried (call me paranoid) about XFCE - they haven't gotten into the redesign craze yet because they barely have enough time to make updates in the first place!

Crazy silly paranoia aside, it is one of the more stable desktops out there, and is enough for most people. (Well, except on Ubuntu, where the battery icon doesn't show up until you kill the power manager, start the power manager's manager, and tell it to start the power manager daemon...) It's also lightweight and simple in design, allowing installation on plenty of systems and ease-of-use for more people.

LXDE is also pretty barebones (even more so than XFCE), but the way it handles menus can be quite frustrating. The whole DE seems unpolished as a whole. Hopefully it will get better as time goes on.

It's funny though how Ubuntu marketed Unity for netbooks - I tried using it (as it was the default), and my netbook crashed. (Or did it start swapping - I can't tell...)

I'm actually worried (call me paranoid) about XFCE - they haven't gotten into the redesign craze yet because they barely have enough time to make updates in the first place!

I'm not sure you understand the design methodology behind XFCE, which is basically "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". It was actually this that first drew me to XFCE, and it's still a powerful reason to keep using it: For the majority of the time, the desktop will remain virtually identical, save bugfixes and minor feature improvements (ie the Deskbar Panel orientation introduced in 4.10)

Remember when GNOME3 and KDE4 came out? They're perfect examples of why this philosophy is sometimes VERY helpful.

Sure, I won't have "Fancy Features of Legend and Yore", by default, but thanks to the already quite fancy theming engine, I can make it look like anything I want.

Oh, and Compiz. XFCE is the easiest DE to use compiz with, IMO. I don't use it often, but some people love it.

Also, last april XFCE came out with what is, for them, a major release: XFCE 4.10. It actually added quite a bit.

XFCE is in a lot better position than, say, LXDE + OpenBox, and that combination isn't showing any signs of slowing either.

tl;dr Open Source DEs don't die out. Look at Trinity or MATE, heck, look at EDE. There are probably only users in the hundreds on some of them, but that doesn't mean they magically stop working.

I agree that sometimes linux is not as stable as windows but windows crashes sometimes too. Within one hour of turning on my laptop the first time I got it I got a blue screen of death from impropery installed graphics drivers. Package managers in linux would generally prevent that though. I think a customized XFCE based ubuntu/mint would apeal to gamers at least. Its customizable its not too far from the XP look(if customized right) and its extremely stable in my experience.

I agree that sometimes linux is not as stable as windows but windows crashes sometimes too. Within one hour of turning on my laptop the first time I got it I got a blue screen of death from impropery installed graphics drivers. Package managers in linux would generally prevent that though. I think a customized XFCE based ubuntu/mint would apeal to gamers at least. Its customizable its not too far from the XP look(if customized right) and its extremely stable in my experience.

Xubuntu. I installed this on a friends computer and showed him the package manager: "Holy Shit!" It looks *really good*, and the interface is nice. (It wasn't a PITA to install either).

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